How do I clone MBP's HDD to new SSD?

I need to clone everything I currently have, including the OS, on my MBP's HDD to my new SSD.

Any way to do this?

 

Yes, through Time Machine. Use Time Machine to backup everything on an external hard drive. The hard drive needs to be large enough to store everything on your current HDD so make sure it has enough free space. Backup everything via Time Machine, turn your system off, install the SSD, plug the external HDD in with the Time Machine backup, turn on your Mac, and I believe you are supposed to hold Option-N while it is booting. That will let your Mac boot from Apple's servers so you can restore from a Time Machine backup.

Of course, if your system came with Snow Leopard (and is still currently running that), you can just boot from that disc and restore from a Time Machine backup. Also, if you upgraded to Lion, I recommend burning an installation DVD and booting from that instead. Otherwise, if your system came with Lion installed, I believe the method above will work.

I am not 100% sure on the keyboard combination so you may want to wait for someone else to chime in.

 

Yes it came with Lion. How can I burn an installation DVD from OS Lion?

 

I forgot to mention that you can create a bootable USB drive too. However, you can't do either if it came with Lion pre-installed. As I said, that will work only if you upgraded to Lion.

There are other options if you want to clone your HDD to your SSD such as using the disk image tool but that will work a lot easier if you have an external enclosure for your SSD. Otherwise, you might as well just use Time Machine and boot from the network.

 

If you want to run the Lion install, plug it into the internet (ethernet or wireless that is open or using WPA) and hold command-r when you boot.

I just bought a MBP 13.3" and I installed my SSD then followed those directions. More details can be found here:
OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery

 

uh im getting a blinking folder with a question mark...

I am holding down Command + R and keep holding and pressed the power button while holding Command + R

 

That's what I received when I wasn't holding Command-R. Make sure you have Command-R pressed before you turn it on and keep holding Command-R until you see the recovery - do not let go prior to that.

 

I did that. Nothing. It got to recovery when the old HDD was in there but not when the SSD was in there.

So this is what I did instead:

I bought an external enclosure and put my SSD in there. Turned on time machine and put it on a different external HDD. Held down CMD + R and it got to recovery (with old hdd still inside the mac). From there I was able to restore from Time Machine on the external to my SSD (still inside the enclosure). I then replaced the HDD in my Mac with the SSD after restoration was complete. And it boots up normally!

How come when I tried to re-install with Lion instead of Time Machine it asked me to pay for it? I thought it was free to recover from Apple's server?

 

Are you sure the laptop came with Lion? Did you buy the laptop new from Apple? That would also explain the failure of Command-R with a fresh drive in the system.

Or maybe it's just the 2011 line that has that feature.

 

Pretty sure the MBPs did not all support Internet Recovery (the airs did)--that's why Command - R is not working for you.

Glad you got it worked out though....clever

 

The ones that shipped with Lion are supposed to, the ones that did not but were upgradeable to Lion may allow you to upgrade the EFI to support it.

The page for upgrading your EFI is:
Computers that can be upgraded to use Lion Internet Recovery

Which is mentioned in the recovery page I linked above.

 

Forget using Time Machine. Its much quicker to use SuperDuper.

SuperDuper!

 

I have been using CopyCatX to do full hdd backups. CopyCatX has a clone function and you can clone the entire device (i.e. the entire hdd) to a hdd of the same size or bigger - this includes the Lion recovery partition. I have an USB drive with a copy of Snow Leopard and CopyCatX. I boot my mbp off the USB drive then I run copycatx and I clone the internal HDD to the external HDD (I have a sata enclosure for the target hdd and I plug it into one of the usb ports). At the end of this process you can swap the hdds because the target hdd contains the exact image of the original hdd. I should also add that the support for CopyCatX has been excellent.

If your destination hdd is smaller than the original one then things are trickier , it is a scenario I was looking into as well. Basically, my idea was to install Lion onto the new hdd (using a dvd) then use CopyCatX to override the new instance from the original disk. To do this one might have shrink the original partition to the size of the target provided that you can fit all the data into the target.

A free alternative to copycatx is Carbon Copy Cloner but I haven't used it so I can't tell you how it works.